One of the most important programmes I oversaw, just before I left the BBC, was a Panorama investigation into drugs in sport. The investigation was done in collaboration with the US based news organisation ProPublica and it would have been impossible to complete without them. They are a great organisation to work with and since then I have always kept a keen eye on the work they do and how the organisation is run.
And so it was with interest that I read their latest staff diversity report published last week.
As you can imagine I have plowed through quite a few diversity reports of media organisations over the years and I must confess there is a lot to commend the ProPublica report.
First, for racial diversity they don’t just break the numbers into two broad numbers of “white” and “non-white”, which is what a lot of other media organisations do, although they don’t classify it as “non-white”, in the UK it is normally labelled BAME (Black Asian & Minority Ethnic) and in the US it is PoC (People of Colour).
The idea that all non-white people suffer from the same type of prejudice is not only simplistic but can be detrimental if you are trying to improve the full range of racial diversity. One BAME number might hide the fact that certain ethnic groups are not progressing compared to others.
Second, they broke their numbers down along editorial and non-editorial roles. This is something that media diversity campaigners like Simon Albury have been pushing for sometime for media organisations in the UK to do. It is the editorial roles which are crucial in deciding the output that is produced. So far I am unaware of any UK based media organisation or broadcaster that currently does this, and it can hide the true diversity of who makes the programmes or writes the news, as the headline figure is bumped up by non-editorial roles.
However at the same time as commending their reporting I think in many ways it, and most diversity reporting in newsrooms and media organisations, is fundamentally flawed.
Diversity for the most part is still seen as a headcount issue.
When I was at BBC Scotland we were equally obsessed with diversity - regional diversity - but the subject of head counts relative to London was rarely raised.
What we concentrated on was finances and slots.
We wanted to make sure BBC Scotland was getting its equal share of the money and programme slots.
The idea is with money and programmes slots the jobs will follow.
If you do it the other way round you can be in the position that we are currently in, that the small number of BAME directors in television hides an even worse fact that they are predominantly working on smaller budget programmes. An example of this is the number of BAME directors on the primetime BBC soap EastEnders is less than 2%, while for the far smaller budgeted Doctors it is over 20%.
On paper both the EastEnders and Doctors directors are classified as the same for diversity reports. but there is a qualitative difference.
Simple head count diversity reports do not pick this up but financial diversity reports would.
The same problems apply in newsrooms up and down the country.
Good journalism takes time and money. Some reporters are given more time and resources than others. To not capture this in our diversity reports gives a completely misleading picture as to what is happening in the newsroom.
I am not advocating that we completely ignore looking at headcount diversity, we were aware of headcount in BBC Scotland, but in my experience it is not a useful metric if we want to achieve real long-term change.
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